...Which is why we have free and open standards that web browsers should use. Its really silly that some web browsers don't implement all of the easy to-implement free/open standards out there.
The general public rejects 7, if for no other reason, it is different. The fact is, the vast majority of the general public don't know how to actually use computers, they've instead memorized steps, especially those over 50. Sure, there are people who know how to use computers, most young people know how to actually use a computer, but there is a large segment of the population which simply has memorized steps.
The only reason why people have been embracing 7 at all is because it isn't Vista. I can guarantee you that if, given the choice between two machines of identical specs the only difference being one is running XP and the other is running 7, the vast majority of the general public would choose the XP machine.
An unexpected side effect that would be hard to have considered during normal QA.
"unexpected"? Look, the point of quality assurance and testing is to test them in real-world scenarios. That means ways that people would be using it outside of Apple HQ. Yes, you might have to -gasp- not keep this counter-productive cult of secrecy around your product, yeah, its fine for a publicity stunt but when it undermines your quality of the product, like the iPhone 4 clearly proves, it is a danger to your company if it doesn't meet your customer's expectations, especially when, like Apple you try to create an illusion of perfection in your products and criticize any customer telling you differently.
Look at every other cell phone manufacturer, somehow they've managed to avoid these issues for the most part by doing two things. 1. They have adequate R&D and quality assurance, and 2. they don't try to pretend their products are perfect but rather want to work with their customers to make them happy, not tell them "you're holding it wrong".
I think that a lot of the problems that Microsoft (and Apple) have has to do with management rather than incompetent employees. Everyone I've talked to who works at both MS and Apple know what they are doing, but rather management wants them to do it a different way. Just look at the Apple III, it wasn't a huge commercial failure because Apple's engineers didn't know that they needed a way to dissipate heat from the computer, but it was a huge commercial failure because Steve Jobs forbid them from using the most reliable way to dissipate heat in hopes of making a "silent" computer. Its things like that, those upper-level or mid-level management decisions that force logic-driven people to act illogically.
Um, what? No they won't. How many mediocre Journey cover bands do you find on The Pirate Bay (who aren't just trying to build publicity), none. Yet their stuff is under just as much copyright as Journey songs legally. Its just no one bothers pirating crappy Journey cover bands because no one really likes it. People don't pirate "anything" they pirate what they think is either:
A) Easier to find via pirating than legitimate means (things like obscure Japanese ROMs, DRM-encumbered files, etc.)
B) Things that cost far too much to their actual value (such as textbooks)
C) Things that are better to get pirated than legitimately acquired (games stripped of DRM, etc.)
Unless things are in bulk (As in, get all titles with the author's name A-C), people aren't going to be pirating crappy e-books.
Until we lose access to the original Huckleberry Finn, nothing has been lost or destroyed.
Except for the fact that we will in essence. When we teach our kids the bowdlerized versions of stories, we lose our past. We suddenly change the entire meaning of the past from something not too far removed from today to a Disney storybook where everyone lives happily. When kids stop studying the originals of things and start studying the politically correct interpreted versions we lose all independent thought. Yes, Huck Finn was written in a time different than 2011 and that is the entire point of schools, is to educate people about the past. What is next? Not reading the Constitution in its original language? After all its over 200 years old! How can kids understand it when its over 200 years old! Yeah, lets get rid of any literature or any reading materials over 30 years old that haven't been significantly re-written. And as for schools and libraries, this is where this book is going to go. How many adults do you think A) Really want to read Huck Finn and B) Would be so terribly up in arms about the word "nigger". Yes, people have the right to make as many edits to public domain books as they wish, but where is this thing going to be financially successful? The only place is in schools and libraries.
Every "crowdsourcing" thing is a for-profit business. There isn't an organization that isn't out there to make money for themselves. Sure, they might justify it as expenses, but just as we work to get a paycheck to pay for rent/mortgage, food, clothes, etc. they do the exact same thing. The only difference is generally scale.
And they essentially failed, the goal of OpenMoko if I recall correctly was to make a multi-purpose Linux distro that everyone could flash on their phones while being about as good as the top of the line phones (which at that time I believe it was the iPhone 1st gen and BlackBerry) there wasn't anything about a phone in their original mission statement if I recall correctly. Rather, they made a phone to have a development platform to work on, and then once it became clear their distro was destined for failure and Qtopia was able to be flashed on the development phone pretty much everyone decided to screw the idea of a unified distro and go with what had already been done.
Constantly consistent if you choose to use everything Apple. A total pain in the rear if you don't. Sure, if you have several thousand dollars to spend on getting -everything- Apple you will have a decent user experience, but if you don't it is a complete pain. Take for instance iTunes on Windows. First off, the thing pretty much has to install 1/4th of OS X to even run, because of this, it is easily the slowest running music player out there when compared to native, or lightweight applications like Foobar2000 or VLC. Quite honestly, iTunes is the reason I no longer really use my iPod touch. Everything in iTunes managed to be a complete pain when compared to my Android phone. With my phone, I just plug in a USB cable, mount my SD card as a USB storage device and copy and paste my new music from Amazon MP3. With iTunes it had to back up all my data, applications, etc. which took forever and quite honestly there was very little worth backing up in the first place, I mean, really I'll take the risk that my Final Fantasy II save file might be deleted if something goes terribly wrong. Then when you download things from iTunes it takes -forever- not to download the files but to "process" them, the UI is sluggish and iTunes seems to think it needs updated all the time. Yes, I want to download a new iOS version for my iPod touch and I really don't care about the fact that I'm using iTunes 8, 9, 10 or whatever. And no, I shouldn't need a Core i7 to manage my music and "sync" a device, when Foobar2000, VLC and pretty much every single application other than iTunes works just fine, it is a problem with iTunes.
I'll take my "harder" approach that takes 3 minutes to get music/video/etc. to my device than take the 20 minute ordeal that is iTunes any day.
If I recall correctly, it wasn't the single player mode that was fun in GoldenEye but rather the multiplayer elements. The single player campaign was good but it wasn't revolutionary the way multiplayer was.
As much as I'd really, really love to dismiss Stallman as a lunatic, I can't help but realize he's been right about most everything he has predicted. Most of the world thought he was silly when he predicted the rise of "Tivoization" where most of us would be running free software but not have the ability to modify it because of hardware controls... Hm, I don't know about you but that seems awfully close to the current state of Android right now, with phones being made to prevent people from adding/removing programs or operating systems on it. The problem is, on almost every prediction RMS has made, he has been spot on. The integrity of the "cloud" is questionable when you realize who is running the cloud, companies with a large amount of money in advertising.
Most people don't want to learn anything, most people want to use the same thing that they were brought up using. The vast majority of people don't want to advance. And if you show them anything electronic that they aren't pressured in to using because of some outside force, they won't use it. How many older people only learned to use a computer because their boss was throwing away the typewriters and they were forced to use DOS? How many people would still be using DOS if it came pre-shipped on most computers and they used DOS at work? Heck, how many people would rather use XP (or earlier) than deal with Vista or 7? People don't want to learn to use new things unless they are pressured. If they wouldn't be looked down upon by others (and tapes were still sold in stores) how many people would still be using a Walkman? Etc. If they still sold the same phone, how many people do you think would would still be using a simple phone?
I've tried switching people who weren't fans of Windows over to Linux and the vast majority switched back to Windows, why? Because it was different. People don't want to change unless some outside force makes them change. Unless there is a force preventing people from going back, or outside pressure to conform, the vast majority of people won't change.
For most practical things, the "cloud" is worthless as a primary storage device. Yes the "cloud" can be useful for backing up data off-site as you noted with contacts with Android. There are some big drawbacks to the "cloud" though.
A) Lack of access. There are many places where it is impossible to get any internet connection (or at least anything that you aren't paying out of the ass for), travel is the number one reason I use my laptop on the go. If I'm on a bus that doesn't have wi-fi on it, I have no internet. Yes, you can buy things through cell phone companies that let you use the internet, but they are expensive and now they are even eliminating unlimited data, giving you a tiny amount of usable data at a high price at low speeds.
B) It is more expensive. For the price of two months of cell phone data service, you can get a decent 500 GB - 1 TB HDD. Yes, I know that hard drives fail, but assuming that they don't fail within 2 months of use, you are essentially saving money by storing your things locally and only using the "cloud" for backups on your home internet connection.
C) It isn't secure. The "cloud" is only as secure as your trust for the person or company that has your data. It shouldn't surprise you that the companies who push the "cloud" as a revolution are the same people who make money off of mining your personal data? Sites like Google and Facebook. Now, I'm not saying that either of those sites is 100% untrustworthy, but still, their main source of income is through selling data to advertisers and selling ads. Not to mention that break-ins and the lack of data integrity is possible, not to mention the legal implications as governments have been known to plant evidence, add that plus a willing company and you have potential jail time for doing nothing wrong.
D) Internet connections aren't uniform. Sure, in a big city or an affluent suburb fast, free, wi-fi is prevalent, with enough money you can buy a nearly lag-free 4G modem and use 4G for surfing the web and accessing the "cloud", but lets say you go to visit your obscure relatives for a family reunion in Middleofnowhere, Iowa. Suddenly, your 4G isn't going to work there, you might not get any service at all, and the house you are staying at has no internet beyond dial-up.
Yes, eventually the "cloud" might change the world. But right now, you'd be foolish to buy into this Chrome OS hype.
Today, PCs are way overpowered for what 99% of the population needs. New features are not driving much in the way of additional sales.
Perhaps, "needs" but not what they want. Take for instance what most people like to play their music with: iTunes. On a PC it is a memory hog, is laggy and needs a lot of power to run correctly. Sure, most people don't "need" iTunes, Foobar2000 does a great job organizing music on Windows, VLC is great at playing music/videos, etc. but most people are familiar with and want to use iTunes. And what about video playback? And forget about gaming without a dedicated video card, etc.
Plus, prices are still stagnant. Despite that generic Leveno netbooks have been out without a spec boost or anything for a year or two now, I don't see any real drop in prices. Bottom-end computers aren't getting any cheaper, despite them essentially doing less and less every year. I'd have no problem buying the Cr-48 if it cost less than a normal netbook (or heck, a bottom-end laptop!) if I'm going to be able to do less with it, the price needs to reflect it. I don't want to pay $300 for a netbook anymore, and if it is only in the "cloud" the price should be around $150 or so.
Exactly, plus it is far too often paying more (or the same) for less. Yeah, Windows XP or vanilla Ubuntu isn't that great on a 10 inch screen sometimes, but at least you have all the application compatibility that you need.
I think that the one thing that really unites the majority of the internet culture is open access of information. And because of that, the internet as a whole likes the fact that the government's "dirty little secrets" are now out in the open. Despite there being a wide range of political viewpoints ranging from communist, to libertarian, to socialist, to anarchist and everywhere in between, much of the internet can agree that open access to information is an essential thing to have.
Democracy is mob rule. The only thing that prevents democracies from becoming mob ruled is with limited government where the government has numerated powers and can't expand beyond them. Because we no longer have much limited government in the US, we have become essentially mob ruled.
Cost != work. Yes, it is cheap to develop games for cell phones, but, A) there are very, very, few cell phone games on par with PSP and DS games. Just look at something that would be a home-run for cell phones: RPGs. But yet, other than ports of games from other consoles I have yet to find one on par with even Pokemon. and B) you have to port it over to several platforms for less marketshare than just porting it to the DS or PSP. Like you said, they don't even program in the same language.
you can share the effort to develop the game rules and then use the model-view-controller paradigm to abstract the UI
Sure, but games are often times made or broken based on their UI. Look at how popular games like Wii Sports are, such games wouldn't translate well to the PS3 or 360 (excluding of course the Kenect and PS3 Move). Nor would a button-heavy game translate well to the Wii.
The problem is, you have a much, much, lower amount of marketshare for each platform you port it to with cell phones when compared to consoles.
Except for parents who have cut the land line and put their kids on the family plan, like my aunt.
Except for the fact that doesn't work for a lot of situations. Its pretty easy to give a DS to a 5 or 6 year old loaded with Mario and have them play it. On the other hand, who is a 5 or 6 year old going to call? And even when they are a bit older like 7 or 8, how do you control your bill? Yes, you can tell them not to text that number that gives you """""free""""" ringtones, but they might do it anyways leaving you stuck with a hefty bill. Plus, smartphone plans are extremely expensive. They aren't the "pay $9 a month and get 30 minutes of call time" type of plans.
Really, smartphones are a dead-end when it comes to gaming. Unless there is a virtual monopoly of 3 phones in 3 identical hardware configurations, handheld games will always be better quality and easier to port for a better experience.
It's amazing how many kids have smartphones these days....really. Heck, parents might see an opportunity to buy one device instead of two....cause you know they're gonna end up buying them a PSP or whatever and a phone anyway.
Yes, but still smartphone plans are expensive, even more so that they dropped the unlimited data on most plans. Plus, it really makes it impossible for kids to work for and pay for their own games/console. I remember that I worked for my parents all summer to save up enough money to buy a SNES when I was younger. Then as I saved up my allowance, I would eventually have enough to buy a game and hand over my money to the cashier to buy the game. Such things were rather rewarding as a kid and taught me a lot about money, something that really doesn't translate well to the world of cell phones, contracts and credit cards.
Yes, but phones take a lot more work to develop -real- games for. Aside from making glorified Flash games, it takes a lot of work to develop a successful game for phones. For one, there is a lot more operating systems to code for: Android, iOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry OS, etc. and within those there are even more questions, will the device support multi-touch? You can't port the same UI for a game expected to run on something like the Galaxy S and one running on something more low end with no multi-touch or a smaller screen.
Similarly, you leave out a hugely popular and hugely lucrative market: kids and gamers. No parent wants to buy their kid a cell phone, especially not a smartphone plan for one. And gamers don't want to have 32423423 cell phone contracts simply to play a few games. It isn't out of the ordinary for people to own multiple consoles, it is, however, out of the ordinary for people to own multiple phones of the same generation.
Right, because the phone/game console hasn't been tried before -cough- Ngage -cough-. The problem with a phone/game platform is that people have to pay a contract which takes it away from a key market: kids. No parent wants to buy their kid a $300 Ubersmartphone, pay a $40 text/call/data plan on it per month AND buy the games. Not to mention all the different operating systems that make it impractical to be a real gamer and play all the good games no matter what the platform. It is feasible for someone to own a DS and PSP, it is feasible for someone to own a Wii, PS3 and 360. It however, is impractical for most people to own an Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iOS and BlackBerry phone.
However, an iPad might compete with my original EEE PC 4G - which I have to nLite XP to get it to fit on (+eeectl = x2 screen brightness for operation in full daylight = awesome).
They are in two separate markets. Tablets and cheap laptops. The iPad is not cheap in the least and is more expensive than most decent laptops. Netbooks gained popularity not because they were small, ultra-portable PCs have been doing small since the early 90s, but because they were cheap. Really, with all the restrictions that the iPad gives you with the high price, I'm better off to get a low-end ultra-portable PC if I don't care about the cost, or a netbook plus an iPod touch.
All that works just fine except for the cloud part. If you look in most ISP's contracts they don't allow you to run servers without buying a "business class" service.
Slashdot Mirror
...Which is why we have free and open standards that web browsers should use. Its really silly that some web browsers don't implement all of the easy to-implement free/open standards out there.
How does any social networking site get money? Through ads and data mining.
The general public rejects 7, if for no other reason, it is different. The fact is, the vast majority of the general public don't know how to actually use computers, they've instead memorized steps, especially those over 50. Sure, there are people who know how to use computers, most young people know how to actually use a computer, but there is a large segment of the population which simply has memorized steps.
The only reason why people have been embracing 7 at all is because it isn't Vista. I can guarantee you that if, given the choice between two machines of identical specs the only difference being one is running XP and the other is running 7, the vast majority of the general public would choose the XP machine.
An unexpected side effect that would be hard to have considered during normal QA.
"unexpected"? Look, the point of quality assurance and testing is to test them in real-world scenarios. That means ways that people would be using it outside of Apple HQ. Yes, you might have to -gasp- not keep this counter-productive cult of secrecy around your product, yeah, its fine for a publicity stunt but when it undermines your quality of the product, like the iPhone 4 clearly proves, it is a danger to your company if it doesn't meet your customer's expectations, especially when, like Apple you try to create an illusion of perfection in your products and criticize any customer telling you differently.
Look at every other cell phone manufacturer, somehow they've managed to avoid these issues for the most part by doing two things. 1. They have adequate R&D and quality assurance, and 2. they don't try to pretend their products are perfect but rather want to work with their customers to make them happy, not tell them "you're holding it wrong".
I think that a lot of the problems that Microsoft (and Apple) have has to do with management rather than incompetent employees. Everyone I've talked to who works at both MS and Apple know what they are doing, but rather management wants them to do it a different way. Just look at the Apple III, it wasn't a huge commercial failure because Apple's engineers didn't know that they needed a way to dissipate heat from the computer, but it was a huge commercial failure because Steve Jobs forbid them from using the most reliable way to dissipate heat in hopes of making a "silent" computer. Its things like that, those upper-level or mid-level management decisions that force logic-driven people to act illogically.
Um, what? No they won't. How many mediocre Journey cover bands do you find on The Pirate Bay (who aren't just trying to build publicity), none. Yet their stuff is under just as much copyright as Journey songs legally. Its just no one bothers pirating crappy Journey cover bands because no one really likes it. People don't pirate "anything" they pirate what they think is either:
A) Easier to find via pirating than legitimate means (things like obscure Japanese ROMs, DRM-encumbered files, etc.)
B) Things that cost far too much to their actual value (such as textbooks)
C) Things that are better to get pirated than legitimately acquired (games stripped of DRM, etc.)
Unless things are in bulk (As in, get all titles with the author's name A-C), people aren't going to be pirating crappy e-books.
Until we lose access to the original Huckleberry Finn, nothing has been lost or destroyed.
Except for the fact that we will in essence. When we teach our kids the bowdlerized versions of stories, we lose our past. We suddenly change the entire meaning of the past from something not too far removed from today to a Disney storybook where everyone lives happily. When kids stop studying the originals of things and start studying the politically correct interpreted versions we lose all independent thought. Yes, Huck Finn was written in a time different than 2011 and that is the entire point of schools, is to educate people about the past. What is next? Not reading the Constitution in its original language? After all its over 200 years old! How can kids understand it when its over 200 years old! Yeah, lets get rid of any literature or any reading materials over 30 years old that haven't been significantly re-written. And as for schools and libraries, this is where this book is going to go. How many adults do you think A) Really want to read Huck Finn and B) Would be so terribly up in arms about the word "nigger". Yes, people have the right to make as many edits to public domain books as they wish, but where is this thing going to be financially successful? The only place is in schools and libraries.
Every "crowdsourcing" thing is a for-profit business. There isn't an organization that isn't out there to make money for themselves. Sure, they might justify it as expenses, but just as we work to get a paycheck to pay for rent/mortgage, food, clothes, etc. they do the exact same thing. The only difference is generally scale.
And they essentially failed, the goal of OpenMoko if I recall correctly was to make a multi-purpose Linux distro that everyone could flash on their phones while being about as good as the top of the line phones (which at that time I believe it was the iPhone 1st gen and BlackBerry) there wasn't anything about a phone in their original mission statement if I recall correctly. Rather, they made a phone to have a development platform to work on, and then once it became clear their distro was destined for failure and Qtopia was able to be flashed on the development phone pretty much everyone decided to screw the idea of a unified distro and go with what had already been done.
Constantly consistent if you choose to use everything Apple. A total pain in the rear if you don't. Sure, if you have several thousand dollars to spend on getting -everything- Apple you will have a decent user experience, but if you don't it is a complete pain. Take for instance iTunes on Windows. First off, the thing pretty much has to install 1/4th of OS X to even run, because of this, it is easily the slowest running music player out there when compared to native, or lightweight applications like Foobar2000 or VLC. Quite honestly, iTunes is the reason I no longer really use my iPod touch. Everything in iTunes managed to be a complete pain when compared to my Android phone. With my phone, I just plug in a USB cable, mount my SD card as a USB storage device and copy and paste my new music from Amazon MP3. With iTunes it had to back up all my data, applications, etc. which took forever and quite honestly there was very little worth backing up in the first place, I mean, really I'll take the risk that my Final Fantasy II save file might be deleted if something goes terribly wrong. Then when you download things from iTunes it takes -forever- not to download the files but to "process" them, the UI is sluggish and iTunes seems to think it needs updated all the time. Yes, I want to download a new iOS version for my iPod touch and I really don't care about the fact that I'm using iTunes 8, 9, 10 or whatever. And no, I shouldn't need a Core i7 to manage my music and "sync" a device, when Foobar2000, VLC and pretty much every single application other than iTunes works just fine, it is a problem with iTunes.
I'll take my "harder" approach that takes 3 minutes to get music/video/etc. to my device than take the 20 minute ordeal that is iTunes any day.
Oddly enough, I don't want comments to be tied to either my Google or Facebook account. And I really don't think I'm in the minority.
If I recall correctly, it wasn't the single player mode that was fun in GoldenEye but rather the multiplayer elements. The single player campaign was good but it wasn't revolutionary the way multiplayer was.
As much as I'd really, really love to dismiss Stallman as a lunatic, I can't help but realize he's been right about most everything he has predicted. Most of the world thought he was silly when he predicted the rise of "Tivoization" where most of us would be running free software but not have the ability to modify it because of hardware controls... Hm, I don't know about you but that seems awfully close to the current state of Android right now, with phones being made to prevent people from adding/removing programs or operating systems on it. The problem is, on almost every prediction RMS has made, he has been spot on. The integrity of the "cloud" is questionable when you realize who is running the cloud, companies with a large amount of money in advertising.
Most people don't want to learn anything, most people want to use the same thing that they were brought up using. The vast majority of people don't want to advance. And if you show them anything electronic that they aren't pressured in to using because of some outside force, they won't use it. How many older people only learned to use a computer because their boss was throwing away the typewriters and they were forced to use DOS? How many people would still be using DOS if it came pre-shipped on most computers and they used DOS at work? Heck, how many people would rather use XP (or earlier) than deal with Vista or 7? People don't want to learn to use new things unless they are pressured. If they wouldn't be looked down upon by others (and tapes were still sold in stores) how many people would still be using a Walkman? Etc. If they still sold the same phone, how many people do you think would would still be using a simple phone?
I've tried switching people who weren't fans of Windows over to Linux and the vast majority switched back to Windows, why? Because it was different. People don't want to change unless some outside force makes them change. Unless there is a force preventing people from going back, or outside pressure to conform, the vast majority of people won't change.
For most practical things, the "cloud" is worthless as a primary storage device. Yes the "cloud" can be useful for backing up data off-site as you noted with contacts with Android. There are some big drawbacks to the "cloud" though.
A) Lack of access. There are many places where it is impossible to get any internet connection (or at least anything that you aren't paying out of the ass for), travel is the number one reason I use my laptop on the go. If I'm on a bus that doesn't have wi-fi on it, I have no internet. Yes, you can buy things through cell phone companies that let you use the internet, but they are expensive and now they are even eliminating unlimited data, giving you a tiny amount of usable data at a high price at low speeds.
B) It is more expensive. For the price of two months of cell phone data service, you can get a decent 500 GB - 1 TB HDD. Yes, I know that hard drives fail, but assuming that they don't fail within 2 months of use, you are essentially saving money by storing your things locally and only using the "cloud" for backups on your home internet connection.
C) It isn't secure. The "cloud" is only as secure as your trust for the person or company that has your data. It shouldn't surprise you that the companies who push the "cloud" as a revolution are the same people who make money off of mining your personal data? Sites like Google and Facebook. Now, I'm not saying that either of those sites is 100% untrustworthy, but still, their main source of income is through selling data to advertisers and selling ads. Not to mention that break-ins and the lack of data integrity is possible, not to mention the legal implications as governments have been known to plant evidence, add that plus a willing company and you have potential jail time for doing nothing wrong.
D) Internet connections aren't uniform. Sure, in a big city or an affluent suburb fast, free, wi-fi is prevalent, with enough money you can buy a nearly lag-free 4G modem and use 4G for surfing the web and accessing the "cloud", but lets say you go to visit your obscure relatives for a family reunion in Middleofnowhere, Iowa. Suddenly, your 4G isn't going to work there, you might not get any service at all, and the house you are staying at has no internet beyond dial-up.
Yes, eventually the "cloud" might change the world. But right now, you'd be foolish to buy into this Chrome OS hype.
Today, PCs are way overpowered for what 99% of the population needs. New features are not driving much in the way of additional sales.
Perhaps, "needs" but not what they want. Take for instance what most people like to play their music with: iTunes. On a PC it is a memory hog, is laggy and needs a lot of power to run correctly. Sure, most people don't "need" iTunes, Foobar2000 does a great job organizing music on Windows, VLC is great at playing music/videos, etc. but most people are familiar with and want to use iTunes. And what about video playback? And forget about gaming without a dedicated video card, etc.
Plus, prices are still stagnant. Despite that generic Leveno netbooks have been out without a spec boost or anything for a year or two now, I don't see any real drop in prices. Bottom-end computers aren't getting any cheaper, despite them essentially doing less and less every year. I'd have no problem buying the Cr-48 if it cost less than a normal netbook (or heck, a bottom-end laptop!) if I'm going to be able to do less with it, the price needs to reflect it. I don't want to pay $300 for a netbook anymore, and if it is only in the "cloud" the price should be around $150 or so.
Exactly, plus it is far too often paying more (or the same) for less. Yeah, Windows XP or vanilla Ubuntu isn't that great on a 10 inch screen sometimes, but at least you have all the application compatibility that you need.
I think that the one thing that really unites the majority of the internet culture is open access of information. And because of that, the internet as a whole likes the fact that the government's "dirty little secrets" are now out in the open. Despite there being a wide range of political viewpoints ranging from communist, to libertarian, to socialist, to anarchist and everywhere in between, much of the internet can agree that open access to information is an essential thing to have.
The internet is essentially for show. 4Chan is essentially for show. It is all essentially a satire on western philosophies of life. 4
Democracy is mob rule. The only thing that prevents democracies from becoming mob ruled is with limited government where the government has numerated powers and can't expand beyond them. Because we no longer have much limited government in the US, we have become essentially mob ruled.
you can share the effort to develop the game rules and then use the model-view-controller paradigm to abstract the UI
Sure, but games are often times made or broken based on their UI. Look at how popular games like Wii Sports are, such games wouldn't translate well to the PS3 or 360 (excluding of course the Kenect and PS3 Move). Nor would a button-heavy game translate well to the Wii.
The problem is, you have a much, much, lower amount of marketshare for each platform you port it to with cell phones when compared to consoles.
Except for parents who have cut the land line and put their kids on the family plan, like my aunt.
Except for the fact that doesn't work for a lot of situations. Its pretty easy to give a DS to a 5 or 6 year old loaded with Mario and have them play it. On the other hand, who is a 5 or 6 year old going to call? And even when they are a bit older like 7 or 8, how do you control your bill? Yes, you can tell them not to text that number that gives you """""free""""" ringtones, but they might do it anyways leaving you stuck with a hefty bill. Plus, smartphone plans are extremely expensive. They aren't the "pay $9 a month and get 30 minutes of call time" type of plans.
Really, smartphones are a dead-end when it comes to gaming. Unless there is a virtual monopoly of 3 phones in 3 identical hardware configurations, handheld games will always be better quality and easier to port for a better experience.
It's amazing how many kids have smartphones these days....really. Heck, parents might see an opportunity to buy one device instead of two....cause you know they're gonna end up buying them a PSP or whatever and a phone anyway.
Yes, but still smartphone plans are expensive, even more so that they dropped the unlimited data on most plans. Plus, it really makes it impossible for kids to work for and pay for their own games/console. I remember that I worked for my parents all summer to save up enough money to buy a SNES when I was younger. Then as I saved up my allowance, I would eventually have enough to buy a game and hand over my money to the cashier to buy the game. Such things were rather rewarding as a kid and taught me a lot about money, something that really doesn't translate well to the world of cell phones, contracts and credit cards.
Yes, but phones take a lot more work to develop -real- games for. Aside from making glorified Flash games, it takes a lot of work to develop a successful game for phones. For one, there is a lot more operating systems to code for: Android, iOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry OS, etc. and within those there are even more questions, will the device support multi-touch? You can't port the same UI for a game expected to run on something like the Galaxy S and one running on something more low end with no multi-touch or a smaller screen.
Similarly, you leave out a hugely popular and hugely lucrative market: kids and gamers. No parent wants to buy their kid a cell phone, especially not a smartphone plan for one. And gamers don't want to have 32423423 cell phone contracts simply to play a few games. It isn't out of the ordinary for people to own multiple consoles, it is, however, out of the ordinary for people to own multiple phones of the same generation.
Right, because the phone/game console hasn't been tried before -cough- Ngage -cough-. The problem with a phone/game platform is that people have to pay a contract which takes it away from a key market: kids. No parent wants to buy their kid a $300 Ubersmartphone, pay a $40 text/call/data plan on it per month AND buy the games. Not to mention all the different operating systems that make it impractical to be a real gamer and play all the good games no matter what the platform. It is feasible for someone to own a DS and PSP, it is feasible for someone to own a Wii, PS3 and 360. It however, is impractical for most people to own an Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iOS and BlackBerry phone.
However, an iPad might compete with my original EEE PC 4G - which I have to nLite XP to get it to fit on (+eeectl = x2 screen brightness for operation in full daylight = awesome).
They are in two separate markets. Tablets and cheap laptops. The iPad is not cheap in the least and is more expensive than most decent laptops. Netbooks gained popularity not because they were small, ultra-portable PCs have been doing small since the early 90s, but because they were cheap. Really, with all the restrictions that the iPad gives you with the high price, I'm better off to get a low-end ultra-portable PC if I don't care about the cost, or a netbook plus an iPod touch.
All that works just fine except for the cloud part. If you look in most ISP's contracts they don't allow you to run servers without buying a "business class" service.